I love a good road trip and when I was younger, e.g., before marriage, children and career, I took some memorable ones. But never cross country or the like. That trip remains in my bucket list, as much for the journey as for the photographic opportunity.

This brings me to Jeff Dunas. I saw a great recent interview of him on YouTube this past week which made me think about his wonderful book American Pictures. Published in 2001 with photographs made at the end of the century, it makes me think of other equally wonderful books I am lucky to own … Walker Evans’ American Photographs, and Robert Frank’s The Americans, whose timeless pictures were made in the 1930s and 1950s respectively. It’s a fascinating experience to look at the three of these important books to get a better understanding of where we’ve been … and perhaps where we’re headed.

After moving to Paris and living there for twenty years, Dunas returned to the U.S. with the idea of documenting America in terms of “scenes representative of the small-town America that he remembered from his youth in the 1960s”. Whether the resulting work successfully accomplished that mission is up to the viewer to decide. I grew up during the same as Dunas, and for me it does. But that hardly matters. The book is wonderful collection of exceptionally seen and printed black and white pictures of ordinary Americans living their daily lives, the environment they live in and the artifacts that surround them.

A big and sprawling book, it contains over 120 images, each telling a story for those willing to look hard and imagine. Easily obtained new or used, for me it’s a must have!

Stay well,

Michael